Equal justice under the law? No, not in Bangladesh. And why not? Obviously because authorities are sympathetic to the rioters, and not to the accused “blasphemer.”
“Bangladesh: Hindu youth sentenced to 5 years in jail for ‘blasphemy’, rioters who burned down entire Hindu village for his Facebook post roam free,” OpIndia, February 11, 2023:
A Hindu youth in Bangladesh has been sentenced to 5 years in jail by a court for alleged blasphemy. Paritosh Sarkar, accused of making blasphemous comments on Facebook, has also been fined 30,000 Taka by the Rangpur Cyber Tribunal. Sarkar was convicted under Digital Security Act by judge Abdul Majid Roy of the tribunal on Wednesday.
Paritosh Sarkar has been awarded a sentence of a total of 11 years in jail, as he has been awarded four sentences of one year, two years, three years and five years. However, the sentences will run concurrently, therefore he will need to stay in jail for 5 years. Prosecution Counsel Ruhul Amin Talukdar said that Paritosh has been convicted for hurting religious sentiments.
Poritosh was sentenced under section 31(1) of the Digital Security Act which criminalises the publication of anything that “creates enmity, hatred or hostility among different classes or communities of the society, or destroys communal harmony”.
Paritosh Sarkar had allegedly posted an image on Facebook in October 2021, which was deemed blasphemous by Muslims. Following the image posted on the social media platform was spotted by Islamists, his village was attacked by a mob, and the entire village was burned down on 17 October 2021. The incident took place in Bara Karimpur Hindu village of Ramnathpur union in Pirganj upazila of Rangpur district. The mob was mobilised by making announcements on the mosque loudspeakers.
Alleging that the Facebook post by Paritosh Sarkar insulted the religious feeling of Muslims, a large number of Islamists had arrived at his house at the village on 17 October 2021. However, the police arrived on time, and controlled the mob. While police were able to protect the house, the mob diverted their anger to the entire village, and launched a massive attack.
An entire fishing village of Hindus was burned down by Islamists, as over 60 houses of Hindus were torched in the attack. Before torching the houses, the Islamists had vandalised the village, and looted the houses, taking away valuables, livestock and other items. Hindu temples in the village were vandalised, with the idols broken down. The house of Paritosh was also later vandalised and the cowshed was torched as the police was overpowered by the mob.
The villages fled to the nearby paddy fields when their village was being burned down. Police had to resort to firing in the air and firing rubber bullets to control the mob, and the situation was brought under control by the night with the arrival of additional forces. Paritosh and his family also fled from the village….
Police have claimed that after the arrest, Paritosh Sarkar confessed to committing blasphemy, and that he was 19-years-old at that time. However, Paritosh and his family maintains that he didn’t posted the image, and his phone was broken beyond repair at that time. They said that there is no evidence that he had posted the image.
However, the court rejected these arguments and convicted him of “hurting the religious sentiments”. His lawyer said that they will move the High Court against the verdict.
While Paritosh has been convicted and sentenced for the Facebook post, nobody has been convicted so far for the attack on the Hindu village. Around 150 people have been booked in the case, and the trials in three cases registered for the incident are still going on. While 72 people are on the run, 74 accused in the case of the attack on the village have been granted bail, and they are roaming free. Those who are on bail include village mosque’s moazzem Rabiul Islam, who made the calls from the mosque loudspeaker for people to gather, Saikat Mandal who masterminded the violence, and Ujjal Hasan, who had taken a screenshot of the ‘blasphemous’ Facebook post and spread it.
PRCS says
Blasphemy laws!
We all know full well that Muslims in the U.S. would–given the political power to do so–would impose them on the rest of us.
Think for a moment:
There are not enough Muslims in Minnesota to have elected Keith Ellison to that state’s “Top Cop” job (Attorney General).alone. No, clueless/agenda-driven “filthy unbelievers” were the true culprits in that shameful event.
Ditto dear Ilhan Omar.
And there are many others–in every state–who would gladly do the same.
OLD GUY says
100% agree.
tim gallagher says
Sounds like the usual life in a country where the Muslims have power. It is always a nightmare for all non-Muslims. It annoys me that, in the western world, we treat Muslims well but, wherever Muslims have gained power, they never treat non-Muslims well at all. Of course, such evil comes straight out of that foul book, the Koran, which is full of hatred for the non-believers. Hence, Muslims will always treat non-Muslims very badly.
Jayell1 says
As I understand the history books, the original ‘India’ was partitioned on independence into present-day ‘India’ and ‘East/West Pakistan’ because it had become all too evident that muslims could never be trusted to cohabit in a civilised fashion with any other religious groups when left to their own devices, islam being a fraudulently pseudo-theocratic totalitarian political ideology and thus incompatible with any civiiised human society. The only way to keep order before partition was apparently to keep the clamps on everything as much as possible – plus a bit of judicious soft-soaping here and there which didn’t go down too well with certain minorities, apparently; but which an impartial third party (the British in this case) somehow managed to do with some success from the end of a 5-6,000 mile pre-electronic communication line and with only a maximum of about 300,000 expats from the UK (about 0.075% of India’s population at the time) on the entire subcontinent at any one time. Partitioning, with the consequent population-shifting, understandably caused a lot of trouble and controversy at the time, but this kind of religious apartheid must surely be preferable to stories like this one which now seem to be incessantly cropping up here on Mr. Spencer’s site.
So why doesn’t the world insist that musiims simply stay in their own designated territories and everyone else simply leave them to wallow in their institutional criminal depravity in private – unless, of course, some modern-day international third party with enough clout can sit on them again – with a semblance of civility, of course? But don’t ask anyone in the West – they just seem to have given up the ghost.